


seafoam against the sand

by aeruh



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, M/M, SHEITH - Freeform, Shiro’s a merman, Takashi Shirogane - Freeform, an orca, but like, huge orca Shiro, it’s Shiro, keith kogane - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 11:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16262843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeruh/pseuds/aeruh
Summary: Keith decided to take a vacation for a week and spend it at the coast. No people, quiet, plenty of time for him to relax. It should go great, right?Naturally, soon enough Keith is proven wrong. It happens when he realizes something in the water is staring at him. It’s an orca—only it isn’t. Not really.Keith has a situation.





	seafoam against the sand

The sound of the waves are soothing. Keith decides that this is dangerous, as he’s already tired and the sun is warm. White noise is the last thing he needs, and if he falls asleep out on the deck like this, he’ll wake up with the worst sunburn mankind has ever seen.

But the chair is comfortable, and the weather is nice. Keith also just bought the sunglasses he’s wearing two days ago and he’s trying to test them out. So far, he thinks they’re worth keeping. Mostly because they’re red and he thinks they make him look cool.

(That doesn’t happen often. Keith has to take advantage of it when he can.)

In the end, the sunglasses only make it harder for him to keep his eyes open. It helps darken his surroundings, and staying awake simply becomes unavoidable. Before Keith is even aware of it, he finds himself in a half-doze on the deck of the beach house in shorts and a red tank top. The kind of doze where dreams mix with reality, and it’s impossible to tell what is true and what isn’t.

Because of this, Keith thinks he sees the black fin of a giant sea creature breaking through the water. 

_An orca?_ Keith thinks with curiosity muffled by drowsiness. The fin slips black under the water, out of sight, and he isn’t sure if he actually witnessed it or not. _I didn’t think they passed through here._

Sleep claims him then, and he goes willingly. If he dreamed after that, Keith doesn’t remember. 

 

The sun is higher in the sky when Keith returns to the living world. Sure enough, he can already feel the beginning of a sunburn that makes him feel almost feverish. His throat is dry and he wants nothing more than a gallon of ice-cold water.

Sitting up takes more time and concentration than it should. He groans without meaning to; not so much out of pain rather than the effort. When was the last time Keith was able to sleep so still? He couldn’t even recall. Then again, it was probably more because of the narrow beach chair than anything. Not much room to move around.

When Keith finally lets his limbs stretch, they thank him for it. He extends his arms above his head and works the last shadows of sleep from his body, and decides that it’s probably time to finally remove himself from the deck before he becomes a part of it. 

And that’s when Keith sees it.

It confirms that what he witnessed in his half-asleep state wasn’t just a dream. As a matter of fact, he’d completely forgotten it even happened until he spots the same black and white figure. 

There is just one small problem with it. Well, actually, it’s a big problem. A _huge_ problem, really. The orca is so big that it is easy to make out the details, and Keith can instantly see that after the dorsal fin, black fades into smooth, suntanned skin. Human skin. Or… as human as skin can be on an orca.

_Holy shit,_ Keith thinks, surprisingly calm, to himself. _That’s a mermaid._

A real mermaid. Like the kind in the Disney movies, or something out of an illustration page from a storybook. The kind that he used to daydream about when his father took him on camping trips to the beach, and sand covered the floor of their tent. 

Keith gave up on mermaids years ago, not too long after his father was taken from him in a fire. It didn’t make sense to him for wonderful, magic creatures to exist in a universe that stole all he had away. But apparently it loved to fuck with him, because out in the water was a… a giant… mer-orca?

His eyes are still locked on the creature, and it takes Keith a second to realize that it is staring back at him, too. 

Its human eyes bore into him, and though Keith can’t see _exactly_ what color they are, he can tell that they are dark and trained right on him like a predator. Blood drains from Keith’s face and something keeps him from being able to look away. After today, he won’t be allowed to make any jokes about deer in headlights, because Keith has no doubt this thing could reach his rented beach house if it wants and eat him. 

The mer-orca blinks its huge eyes at him once, slowly. Keith can do nothing but watch as it sinks back into the water and vanishes just like it did the first time. He’s left on the back deck, sunburnt and still groggy and alone. His brain is reeling, and part of it is trying to convince him that the mer-orca was just a product of being overheated. Because how could this be real?

Keith looks to his left and to his right, but naturally, there is no one in sight. The beach house is tucked away from everyone else in town, cut off by a wall of rock that juts out from the mountain behind them and sloping into the water. It turns the property into a tiny cove of sorts. The privacy makes the house in constant demand, and Keith isn’t sure how he managed to rent it out for the week. But this means there are no people around except for himself. To make matters worse, the cell signal is shit at the coast, and there’s no wifi. Contacting his tiny group of friends is impossible. There’s no one he can share this with, and it’ll only run laps around his mind until he loses his sanity completely. 

His skin is hot to the touch. Keith isn’t sure how long he spent napping, but he figures it’s past time to go back in. There isn’t much he can do standing on the back deck. In fact, there isn’t much he can do _at all._ When he unlocked the front door of the house for the first time, there were plenty of handbooks spread on the coffee table. But he would bet all his money that not a single one of them included advice on how to handle the discovery of mermaids. What was Keith supposed to do? Go back to normal life?

Spending the rest of the day in the shade was probably better than burning more in the sun, at least. And Hunk made sure Keith didn’t leave without a bottle of that weird aloe gel-stuff when he was packing for his vacation. Small blessings.

Keith passes a hand through his hair for a lack of anything else to do. He turns around to go back in, but pauses with a hand on the sliding glass door. Something draws him to look over his shoulder, but the ocean just crashes on the beach, as though there was never anything there at all. 

He eyes growing clouds on the horizon and steps through the doorway.

**Author's Note:**

> I sat down one night and thought “You know what I love? Orcas. You know what else I love? Shiro. You know what two things share the same color scheme? Orcas and Shiro.”


End file.
